THE MISUSE OF MOBILE PHONES

mobile phonesThe Misuse of Mobile Phones
By Said Muniruddin

Nowadays, mobile phones appear as a dilemma in the society. Ideally, this new invention should improve our live, specifically for communication. Conversely, many people use this gadget in the wrong way. They are busy calling colleague in the middle of a meeting, conference, and lecture or at any moment which they actually should pay a serious attention. The following are some illustrations about the misuse of these devices.

Have a look in television particularly when legislative members are having a meeting in the House of Representatives (DPR) in Senayan. What is the common scene? Most of them are busy talking using their phones. Interestingly, others are having fun with sending short messages. Only a few of legislative members are really seriously involved in the meeting. Can you imagine that? Were they elected and highly paid just to sit and play with their phones? This is one of the results of a new invention when used by the idiots.

Now let see what happen at schools, particularly in the classes. Students are seemingly listening to their teacher. In fact, they are pretty busy texting and replying messages. When the teacher warns them not to activate the phones, they simply say “Sorry sir, I am expecting for an important call from my family”. In the meantime, others are somewhat busy coming in and out of the classroom only to make phone calls or to answer a call. It cannot be denied that those students are very much poisoned by this gadget.

In the same way; many seminars, discussion, talks, or lectures are always annoyed by the ring of the phones. Various ring tones appear throughout the whole lecture. The intellectual meeting seems like a hand phone sound exhibition. This problem should be carefully handled. Based on my experience when conducting a seminar, I reminded the participants: “Ladies and gentlemen, please turn off your mobile phones during the seminar, no matter how expensive you have bought it. Otherwise we cancel this seminar”. Sometimes we need a strict rule to manage people.

As we have seen, in spite of the fact that mobile phones have their advantages; they still remain a problem when applied incorrectly by certain people. Are we one of them? *****

(This is a writing assignment during the Pre-Academic Training [PAT] of Ford Foundation International Fellowship Program [FF-IFP] at PPB-UI Salemba, Jakarta: September 2004 – March 2005).

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